Reese Carter is the heroine of my novella, His Work of Art, and I think she’s one of my all-time favorite heroines. Reese is all tomboy and she feels totally comfortable in her skin (except for the fact that she’s small-chested). She’s a T-shirt and cargo pants kind of girl because she needs many pockets for pens and pencils to write with.

Reese is a comic and gaming nerd. She loves her DC heroes (she has an extreme love for Batman and Batgirl). She participates in a weekly tabletop game with friends. No matter where she goes, or what she does, she’s a writer at heart. She lives for stories.

She loves comic books and when the store she used to shop at closed, she discovered Comic Universe and Adam Hayes. She’s been crushing on Adam for a long time and when she catches him drawing, she asks him to illustrate her comics for her senior project. While she’d love to go on a date with Adam, she assumes he isn’t interested in her, but she still wants to work with him because she respects his talent.

Working with Adam is harder than she imagined (and not because of their growing attraction). Adam questions her work and makes her think about her characters and stories in a way she’s not used to. He pushes her to be a better writer. It’s just one more thing she loves about him.

She falls hard for Adam and is crushed when he pushes her away because of the color of her skin. She’s not naïve about the world; she just doesn’t care what people think. After growing up with an abusive father, she knows to trust her instincts when it comes to men. She knows Adam is a good man. She trusts him with her heart. She just has to make him have the same faith in them she has.

His Work of Art

Reese Carter is definitely not your average college girl. She’d prefer to spend Saturday nights playing Hero’s Crusade than attending a wild frat party on campus. When she bands together with Adam, fellow comic enthusiast and illustrator, it appears that Reese has formed a dream team sure to propel her writing into the comic hall of fame.

Adam Hayes has never met a girl like Reese. She’s sassy, smart, and loves talking comics, although he can’t see why she’d choose DC over Marvel. He’s thrilled to finally put his artistic chops to use in their upcoming comic project. But this relationship is strictly professional. Or so he tells himself. When the two combine forces, they churn out magic in more ways than they had planned; they never expected to develop a steamy romantic sub-plot of their own…

Shannyn Schroeder is the author of the O’Leary series, contemporary romances centered around a large Irish-American family in Chicago and the new Hot & Nerdy series about 3 nerdy friends and their last spring break. When she’s not wrangling her three kids or writing, she watches a ton of TV and loves to bake cookies.